Current Nationwide
Threat Level
Homeland
Security
ELEVATED
Daily Open Source Infrastructure
Report for 28 April 2009
Significant Risk of Terrorist Attacks
For information, click here:
http://www.dhs.gov
Top Stories

According to Reuters, a car accident triggered a power outage that shut two refineries on
Puget Sound in Washington State, electric utility Puget Sound Energy said on Friday. (See
item 3)

WJW 8 Cleveland reports that police say 53 people were arrested when an end of the year
party near the Kent State University campus in Kent, Ohio turned into a riot on Saturday.
The university secured campus buildings in the area as a preventive measure. (See item 42)
Fast Jump Menu
PRODUCTION INDUSTRIES
● Energy
● Chemical
● Nuclear Reactors, Materials and Waste
● Critical Manufacturing
● Defense Industrial Base
● Dams Sector
SERVICE INDUSTRIES
● Banking and Finance
● Transportation
● Postal and Shipping
● Information Technology
● Communications
● Commercial Facilities
SUSTENANCE AND HEALTH
● Agriculture and Food
● Water Sector
● Public Health and Healthcare
FEDERAL AND STATE
● Government Facilities
● Emergency Services
● National Monuments and Icons
Energy Sector
Current Electricity Sector Threat Alert Levels: Physical: ELEVATED,
Cyber: ELEVATED
Scale: LOW, GUARDED, ELEVATED, HIGH, SEVERE [Source: ISAC for the Electricity Sector (ES−ISAC) −
[http://www.esisac.com]
1. April 26, Reuters – (Louisiana) Marathon says worker killed at Louisiana refinery. A
worker was killed on April 23 while working on an expansion project at Marathon Oil
Corp’s 256,000 barrel per day (bpd) Garyville, Louisiana refinery, a company
spokeswoman said. The worker died from injuries sustained in a fall late on April 23,
said a Marathon spokeswoman. Marathon and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health
Administration began investigations into the accident on April 24. This is the second
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death of a worker on Marathon’s $3.2-billion project to expand refinery capacity by
180,000 bpd.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssEnergyNews/idUSN2649631320090426
2. April 25, New York Times – (New York) Residents allowed to return home after fatal
explosion in Queens. Late on April 25, Con Edison crews found a small hole in a twoinch gas main in front of the Queens house that had exploded which appeared to have
been the source of a leak. The crews also found a damaged electrical cable near that
hole, but Con Ed was still investigating what had caused the hole and what had touched
off the explosion, said a Con Ed spokesman. Residents who had been evacuated after the
explosion trickled back to the neighborhood on April 25 as workers restored gas and
electricity to dozens of nearby homes. The spokesman said a Con Ed worker had been
called to investigate a gas leak at 80-46 260th Street about 90 minutes before the blast
and had picked up high gas readings from nearby manholes. After he vented and lifted
covers, the house at 80-50 exploded, the spokesman said. After the blast, Con Ed shut
off gas and electricity to about 50 homes on 259th and 260th Streets between 80th and
81st Avenues.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/nyregion/26explode.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion
3. April 24, Reuters – (Washington) Car wreck triggered power outage at refineries. A
car accident triggered a power outage that shut two refineries on Puget Sound in
Washington State, electric utility Puget Sound Energy said on April 24. A car struck a
power pole the evening of April 23 along Washington State Highway 20 as maintenance
was being done at another location on a transformer bank that would have re-routed
electrical supply to the refineries and about 100,000 other customers, said a Puget Sound
Energy spokeswoman. “Because of very unusual circumstances, we lost power,” she
said. Electricity was restored within about two hours to most customers. On April 24,
Shell Oil Co said it was restarting its 145,000 barrel per day (bpd) Anacortes,
Washington, refinery. Tesoro Corp said power was restored at its 120,000 bpd
Anacortes refinery where workers were checking for damage before beginning the
restart process.
Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN2445349720090424
[Return to top]
Chemical Industry Sector
4. April 27, Sarasota Herald Tribune – (Florida) Cleanup after Sarasota fire a big task.
Crews worked into the night April 26 to clean up a chemical fire at the Florikan
fertilizer plant in the Eastern Industrial Park in Sarasota County. The chemical fire
prompted emergency workers to close two roads and evacuate the industrial park just
south of Palmer Boulevard. Fire officials could not say whether the mess would be
cleaned up in time to reopen Porter and Apex roads and let people return to the
industrial park on April 27. The fire started in a metal wing of the plant used for heating
the fertilizer chemicals and infusing them with plastic to slow the fertilizers’ release and
limit nutrient runoff. The plastic and dust in the wing caught fire, causing a chemical
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plume. The plant owner told fire officials that the plant did not use ammonium nitrate, a
chemical in fertilizer that can explode under certain conditions. Still, fighting the fire
was complicated by the hazardous chemicals on site. Firefighters had to battle the blaze
while at the same time controlling the runoff from the factory so chemicals would not
seriously contaminate nearby ponds or drainage ditches.
Source:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090427/ARTICLE/904271051/2107/BUSINES
S?Title=Cleanup-after-Sarasota-fire-a-big-task
5. April 25, WTVW 7 Evansville – (Indiana) Suspicious anhydrous ammonia leak affects
many. Twenty-one people are out of the hospital after fumes from an anhydrous
ammonia leak. On April 24, the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Department and hazmat
crews responded to a major leak at the Warrick County Co-Op. The dangerous chemical
affected thousands. A chemical cloud in the St. Joe and Mill area put everyone living
nearby in a dangerous situation. A triage was set up at the Rural King on St. Joe to assist
residents feeling symptoms of nausea or inability to breath. More than a dozen patients
were taken to Deaconess hospital, and seven were treated and released from St. Mary’s.
Many roads including St. Joseph Avenue had to be shut down. Train traffic at a nearby
railroad was halted. Deputies believe the incident occurred due to a theft attempt. Two
men, who were spotted near the tanks when the incident occurred, are under
investigation. Investigators say both suspects suffered substantial burns.
Source: http://tristatehomepage.com/content/fulltext/?cid=67481
6. April 25, Associated Press – (International) U.S. Navy helps stranded tanker. Naval
vessels from the United States, Germany and China have come to the aid to a Philippine
chemical tanker stranded without fuel in waters near Somalia days after it was freed by
pirates, an official said April 25. The administrator of the Maritime Industry Authority
said a U.S. Navy ship provided five days worth of diesel fuel for the MT Stolt Strength,
which was drifting some 60 miles east of the Somali coast. She said two Chinese vessels
were also headed to the ship to deliver fuel and food to the ship’s 23 Filipino crew
members. A German navy ship provided food and medicine to the ship shortly after
Somali pirates released it April 21. The pirates seized the ship in November as it sailed
through the Gulf of Aden with a cargo of phosphoric acid.
Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124065204669356089.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
7. April 24, KPLR 11 St. Louis – (Illinois) Chemical spill forces evacuations in Illinois.
Several homes have been evacuated along with a school in Du Quoin, Illinois, where a
tanker truck carrying a dangerous chemical has overturned. The wreck happened on
Highway 51, just south of Du Quoin, which is about 70 miles from St. Louis. The truck
was carrying two tanks of anhydrous ammonia.
Source: http://www.cw11tv.com/news/kplr-duquoin-chemical-spill042409,0,5689073.story
[Return to top]
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Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste Sector
8. April 27, Reuters – (New Jersey) Exelon shut NJ Oyster Creek reactor due to
transformer. Exelon Corp shut the 619-megawatt Oyster Creek nuclear station in New
Jersey on April 25 following the loss of cooling to the main transformer, the company
told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a report. The company said power to
the transformer cooling system oil pumps and fans was lost when the control power
transformer to the system failed. Exelon said in the report it would put the unit in cold
shutdown to perform other maintenance during the outage.
Source:
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSN27516943200
90427
See also: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/eventstatus/event/en.html#en45021
9. April 26, Kankakee Daily Journal – (Illinois) Braidwood nuclear reactor shut down,
malfunction repaired. A malfunctioning cooling system control at Exelon Nuclear’s
Braidwood Generating Station that triggered an automatic shutdown of one of the
plant’s two nuclear reactors the evening of April 24 has been repaired. The Braidwood
Generating Station communications manager said repairs were completed at 7:30 p.m.
on April 25, when the reactor was placed back in service. The incident caused no
environmental impact, injuries or any disruption of service, and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission was notified of the malfunction, he said. The automatic shutdown was
triggered when two of four of the electronic panels that monitor temperatures for the
cooling system were disabled. The cooling system helps regulate the nuclear reaction in
the reaction chamber to make sure uranium fuel rods do not get too hot — which in the
most severe case could cause a meltdown. He said one of the electric panels
malfunctioned while another was down for regular maintenance. The automatic
shutdown slows down the nuclear reaction so the fuel rods cool quickly. It is triggered
when two of the four panels are not operating.
Source: http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=439234
See also: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/eventstatus/event/en.html#en45017
10. April 25, Beaver County Times and Allegheny Times – (Pennsylvania) Small hole not
the first found at Shippingport’s nuclear power plant. The discovery on April 23 of a
small hole in the steel lining of the reactor containment building of Beaver Valley
Nuclear Power Station’s Unit 1 was not the first time a breach has been found there, a
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) spokesman said on April 25. Before the
discovery, no radiation was released from the building, and there was “no impact to the
public health or safety of any employees,” a FirstEnergy spokesman said the evening of
April 24. NRC spokesman said that in 2006, corrosion was found in the lining of the
same containment building when the reactor was shut down so that FirstEnergy could
replace the reactor lid and three steam generators. The Unit 1 reactor has been shut
down since April 20 for scheduled refueling and maintenance. As part of that routine
work, the containment building around the reactor was inspected, the FirstEnergy
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spokesman said. “There’s certainly no immediate cause for concern,” the NRC
spokesman said on April 25. “It’s a very small area on a very large liner (measuring
thousands of square feet). The risk of an accident is small, and the (affected) area is
small, but we take any sort of problem involving a barrier between radioactivity and the
environment very seriously.”
Source:
http://www.timesonline.com/articles/2009/04/25/news/top_stories/doc49f3c9217a2dd69
0281680.txt
[Return to top]
Critical Manufacturing
11. April 25, Racine Journal-Times – (Wisconsin) Fire damages Racine manufacturing
facility, prompts evacuation of nearby industrial laundry. A local manufacturing
company caught fire on the afternoon of April 25, causing the neighboring laundry to be
evacuated because of smoke. Racine firefighters were sent to HFI Fluid Power Products,
1230 Racine St., at about 2:30 p.m. An electrical pole adjacent to the buildings was
struck by lighting the same afternoon, but it is unknown if that caused the fire, said a
Fire Department investigator. The president of Imperial Laundry said his employees told
him they heard a loud crack outside, then saw smoke coming in through the bottom of
the fire door that connects the laundry with the manufacturing company.
Source:
http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2009/04/25/local_news/doc49f3bdb8888a8726009
231.txt
12. April 24, Associated Press – (New Jersey) NJ foundry fined $8 million for violations.
A New Jersey company that manufactures cast iron pipe was fined $8 million April 24
for dozens of environmental violations and lying about numerous safety violations at its
plant along the Delaware River. Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe Co. also will be placed
under a federal monitor for a four-year probationary period. Prosecutors had sought a
maximum fine of $15 million for the company, which was convicted in 2006 of
conspiring to violate environmental regulations and obstructing state and federal probes
at its 153-year-old Phillipsburg plant. The sentencing closed a chapter in a saga that
began in 2003 with a series of articles in the New York Times that described widespread
environmental and worker safety violations at plants owned by Atlantic States’ parent
company, Birmingham, Alabama-based McWane Inc. The articles spurred a federal
investigation, and after a trial spanning seven months in 2005 and 2006, Atlantic States
and four of its employees were convicted on 32 of 34 counts. Four other McWane plants
have pleaded guilty or were convicted of environmental violations.
Source:
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/new_jersey/20090424_ap_njfoundryfi
ned8millionforviolations.html
13. April 24, CCH – (Massachusetts) OSHA proposes nearly $110,000 in fines against
Wyman Gordon Co. for hazards at Grafton, Mass., plant. The Occupational Safety
and Health Administration has cited Wyman Gordon Co. for 29 alleged serious
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violations of safety standards at its Grafton, Massachusetts manufacturing plant. The
metal forgings manufacturer faces $109,500 in proposed fines following two OSHA
inspections conducted between September 2008 and March 2009. OSHA issues serious
citations when death or serious physical harm is likely to result from hazards about
which the employer knew or should have known. The first inspection, conducted under
OSHA’s Site-Specific Targeting program, identified damaged support structures for
overhead cranes; damaged support frames for large metal dies; slipping and tripping
hazards; unguarded floors and platforms; missing access stairs; a damaged access
ladder; non-functioning emergency exit lights; an overloaded fork truck; an overloaded
lifting attachment; defective wire rope slings; unguarded machinery; improper storage of
compressed gas cylinders and several electrical safety deficiencies. OSHA began the
second inspection in response to a December 23 accident in which two employees were
injured when they were struck by a 700-pound forging that shot up in the air while they
were attempting to free it from a malfunctioning die on a power press.
Source: http://hr.cch.com/news/safety/042409a.asp
[Return to top]
Defense Industrial Base Sector
14. April 27, WIRED – (National) Report slams Pentagon’s ‘non-lethal’ arms shop. The
Department of Defense has long talked about the importance of non-lethal weapons,
arms designed to minimize fatalities and unnecessary damage. But a new report from the
non-partisan Government Accountability Office comprehensively demolishes the
Pentagon’s Joint Non-lethal Weapons Program, finding fault with almost every aspect of
its work. Years were spent developing useless systems, weapons were fielded without
proper testing or adequate supplies of ammunition, and countless millions of dollars
were wasted. Established in 1996, the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Program is supposed to
be the U.S. military’s central clearinghouse for researching, developing, testing, and
training troops on these less-than-lethal arms. It is also responsible for policies and
procedures for how and when to use the weapons — while coordinating “requirements”
for what the Army, Navy and Air Force might need in the future. According to the
GAO, it failed in just about all of these efforts. Take R&D, for instance. “The Joint Nonlethal Weapons Program has conducted more than 50 research and development efforts
and spent at least $386 million since 1997, but it has not developed any new weapons,”
the report says. Perhaps the biggest flop was the Program’s most visible project — the
Active Denial System, a microwave ”pain beam” design to send crowds running. The
core technology mostly works. But the system’s logistics make it way too tough to bring
to a warzone. Not only does it have “several subsystems that are too complex for
extensive field repair,” according to the GAO, the system needs “about 16 hours” to
reach its supercool operating temperature, “making it difficult to use on short notice
unless the compressor is kept continuously running.” The report also criticizes the
Program for taking too long to recognize programs that simply are not getting anywhere.
In the meantime, GAO says, the Program has not managed to settle on unified policy on
non-lethal weapons employment, nor come up with a definition of what counts as
“acceptable risk” for the arms, nor devised a proper training plan. “DOD [Department of
Defense] lacks a clear methodology for estimating the human effects of non-lethal
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weapons and does not fully test and evaluate many non-lethal weapons because they
have been fielded under urgent operational requirements,” according to the report.
Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/04/report-slams-pentagons-non-lethalweapons-shop/
15. April 24, Reuters – (National) Boeing’s Airborne Laser begins weapon flight tests.
Boeing Co. said on April 24 it has begun flight tests of its Airborne Laser, designed to
zap missiles soon after they are launched, with the full weapons system on the aircraft.
The aerospace and defense manufacturer said a functional check flight was completed
on April 21 at Edwards Air Force Base in California with the beam and fire control
systems and the high-energy laser onboard. Previous flight tests conducted in 2007 did
not have the high-energy laser on the aircraft, Boeing said. Installation of the laser was
completed last year. The Airborne Laser, a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet, is designed
to locate, track and destroy short-, medium- and long-range missiles during the early
stages of flight. The system is scheduled for an intercept test against a ballistic missile
this year.
Source:
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSN24444441200
90424
[Return to top]
Banking and Finance Sector
16. April 24, MarketWatch – (National) Four banks closed by regulators as credit crunch
shakes out. Four banks in Georgia, Michigan, California and Idaho were closed by
regulators on April 24, costing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s deposit insurance
fund nearly $700 million as the effects of the credit crisis continued rippling throughout
the U.S. economy. Kennesaw, Georgia-based American Southern Bank marked the 26th
bank failure of the year and the fifth in the state of Georgia, the FDIC said. Farmington
Hills, Michigan-based Michigan Heritage Bank then became the 27th failure of 2009,
followed by the closure of Calabasas, California-based First Bank of Beverly Hills.
Alpharetta, Georgia-based Bank of North Georgia has agreed to assume American
Southern Bank’s deposits, the FDIC said in a statement. American Southern’s one office
will reopen as a branch of Bank of North Georgia on April 27. American Southern had
roughly $112.3 million in assets and $104.3 million in deposits as of March 30,
according to the FDIC. Bank of North Georgia has also agreed to buy roughly $31.3
million of the failed bank’s assets, the FDIC said. The FDIC estimated the cost of
American Southern’s failure to its deposit insurance fund will be $41.9 million.
American Southern’s collapse marks the 51st bank failure since the credit crisis began
last year.
Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Another-Georgia-bank-shutteredregulators/story.aspx?guid={982438DE-54E6-4F2E-84FF-FA3F1556A589}
17. April 24, National Credit Union Administration – (Florida) Eastern Financial Florida
Credit Union placed in conservatorship. The National Credit Union Administration
(NCUA) on April 24 assumed control of the operations of Eastern Financial Florida
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Credit Union, a state-chartered, federally insured credit union headquartered in Miramar,
Florida. The Florida Office of Financial Regulations, Bureau of Credit Union
Regulation appointed NCUA as conservator on April 24 after placing Eastern Financial
Florida Credit Union into conservatorship. NCUA has assumed control of the credit
union and has appointed officials from Space Coast Credit Union of Melbourne, Florida
to temporarily manage Eastern Financial Florida Credit Union’s day-to-day operations.
NCUA’s goal is to continue credit union service to the members and ensure safe and
sound credit union operations. Service continues uninterrupted at Eastern Financial
Florida Credit Union and members are free to make deposits, access funds, make loan
payments and use share drafts. While the credit union was placed into conservatorship
because of declining financial condition, the decision to conserve a credit union enables
the institution to continue normal operations with expert management in place.
Source: http://ncua.gov/news/press_releases/2009/MR09-0424a.htm
18. April 24, KDAF 33 Dallas – (Texas) Duncanville police warn of scam. The
Duncanville Police Department has received more than 20 calls from citizens regarding
a possible scam. Citizens reported that they started receiving phone calls on April 23 and
24. The phone call was of a recording advising individuals that their credit card had
been compromised and asked them to enter a number on the phone. It is unknown at this
time if the subjects committing this scam were attempting to take over the individual’s
phone service or if they were attempting to gather personal information from the
individuals they called. The Duncanville Police Department continues to advise citizens
that if they receive a phone call — be it a recording or a live person — asking for
personal information or directing them to enter credit card numbers on the phone, to just
hang up and do not call the number back. At this time, Duncanville Police do not have
any reports of any criminal offenses taking place.
Source: http://www.the33tv.com/pages/content_landing_page/?Duncanville-PoliceWarn-of-Scam=1&blockID=275113&feedID=460
[Return to top]
Transportation Sector
19. April 26, Opelousas Daily World – (Louisiana) Pipeline crosses parish. A 300-mile
pipeline that will eventually connect Donaldsonville, Louisiana to Houston, Texas is
slowing pushing its way across St. Landry Parish in Louisiana and, at least for now,
leaving a lot of damage in its wake. The parish president told the parish council his
office is fielding lots of calls about road damage created by the project that cuts across
about 40 to 50 roads throughout the parish. In addition to the roads cut by the project,
the parish director of administration said damage to other roads is being caused by
simply the weight of the heavy construction trucks. “They are messing up a lot of our
roads. It doesn’t take much to tear up these roads with these big trucks. They are
supposed to pay us back but it is costing us a lot to maintain the roads in the meantime,”
the director of administration said. The president said there is not much the parish can
do about the project. It has a national permit, meaning local government has little say in
how the project will progress. Even so, he said the company has promised to work with
the parish. “I have met with their CEO. They want to work with us. They accept that
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they are responsible for these damages,” he said.
Source: http://www.dailyworld.com/article/20090426/NEWS01/904260302/1002
20. April 25, Boston Herald – (Massachusetts) Passenger acts up, jet gets diverted to
Logan. A Boeing 767 on a flight from New York to Tel Aviv was diverted to Logan
International Airport Friday night when a 22-year-old man began screaming, running
through the aisles, and banging on the cockpit door, a MassPort official said. The unruly
passenger was identified as an Israeli citizen, was forced to the floor by members of the
crew and a handful of the 206 passengers aboard. The group used seatbelts to bind his
hands and keep him subdued until the plane could be diverted to Boston, said a
MassPort spokesman. “This is not an act of any kind of terrorism,” he said. He said no
escort planes were scrambled to bring in Delta flight 86. The crew told air traffic
controllers enroute that the situation was under control.
Source:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2009_04_25_Passenger_acts_up__jet
_gets_diverted_to_Logan/srvc=home&position=also
21. April 24, Newswise – (National) New concrete material heals itself when it cracks. A
concrete material developed at the University of Michigan can heal itself when it cracks.
No human intervention is necessary – just water and carbon dioxide. A handful of
drizzly days would be enough to mend a damaged bridge made of the new substance.
Self-healing is possible because the material is designed to bend and crack in narrow
hairlines rather than break and split in wide gaps, as traditional concrete behaves. A
professor of civil engineering says this new substance could make infrastructure safer
and more durable. In the lab, the self-healed specimens recovered most if not all of their
original strength after researchers subjected them to a 3 percent tensile strain. That
means they stretched the specimens to 3 percent beyond their initial size. It is the
equivalent of stretching a 100-foot piece an extra three feet — enough strain to severely
deform metal or catastrophically fracture traditional concrete. The engineers found that
cracks must be kept below 150 micrometers, and preferably below 50, for full healing.
To accomplish this, the professor and his team improved the bendable engineered
cement composite, or ECC, they have been developing for the past 15 years. More
flexible than traditional concrete, ECC acts more like metal than glass. Traditional
concrete is considered a ceramic. Brittle and rigid, it can suffer catastrophic failure when
strained in an earthquake or by routine overuse. But flexible ECC bends without
breaking. It is studded with specially-coated reinforcing fibers that hold it together. ECC
remains intact and safe to use at tensile strains up to 5 percent. Traditional concrete
fractures and cannot carry a load at .01 percent tensile strain.
Source:
http://www.reliableplant.com/article.aspx?articleid=17164&pagetitle=New+concrete+m
aterial+heals+itself+when+it+cracks
[Return to top]
Postal and Shipping Sector
22. April 24, Modesto Bee – (California) Paint powder disrupts Merced County offices.
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Just after 10 a.m. on April 23, employees in the mailroom at the Human Services
Agency in Merced, California reported a suspicious white powder on the table where
they had just finished sorting mail. One employee left the room to tell his supervisor.
Almost immediately, the county locked down the area and began following its protocol
for dealing with such situations. City and county police, fire and hazardous materials
crews all reported to the building. Which envelope the powder came from was unclear,
and no threats were included in the morning mail, the employee said. Hazardous
materials crew workers suited up in air-tight tan jumpsuits, while the roughly 400 other
agency employees calmly worked at their posts. After a five-minute chemical analysis in
the back of the Merced County hazardous materials big rig, the dust was identified as
non-toxic, dried paint dust. Merced police said they would not investigate the incident
because the dust was not harmful.
Source: http://www.modbee.com/local/story/678201.html
[Return to top]
Agriculture and Food Sector
23. April 27, U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service – (Michigan) Michigan firm recalls
frozen meat and poultry pasta products produced without inspection. Mucci’s Food
Products, Inc., a Canton, Michigan establishment, is recalling an undetermined amount
of frozen meat and poultry pasta products which are adulterated and misbranded because
they were prepared without the benefit of federal inspection, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced Monday. The
frozen meat and poultry pasta products were produced from May 1, 2008 through April
24, 2009. Each product bears the establishment number “19177” or “P-19177” inside the
USDA mark of inspection as well as the Julian Dates of “1218” to “1149” located at the
bottom of the box. The frozen meat and poultry pasta products were distributed to
restaurants in Southeast Michigan, and to brokers and distributors in California, Florida,
Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio.
Source: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/News_&_Events/Recall_017_2009_Release/index.asp
24. April 27, WVLT 8 Knoxville – (Tennessee) Investigation continues after early
morning scare at a West Knoxville night club. Police are still investigating an
incident at a West Knoxville night club. Police were called to the Electric Cowboy on
Seven Oaks Drive around one o’clock Monday morning. Police say a man was involved
in a dispute with bouncers inside the bar and was kicked out. When police confronted
the man outside the bar, they say he was obviously intoxicated and under the influence
of some type of narcotic. A drug dog was then called in. The dog alerted on the man’s
car. The car was then searched by police; inside the car they found a suspicious device
and narcotics. The bomb squad was called in to investigate the device. At around 2:30
a.m. as the bar was letting out, police say several large fights broke out because the
patrons’ cars were in an area where the device was found. The Knox County Sheriff’s
Department and the Tennessee Highway Patrol were called in to help control the crowd.
Four people were arrested. At around 3:30 a.m., a police robot moved the suspicious
device from the man’s car, placed it on the far side of the parking lot and detonated it.
The man was arrested by police. He is facing various charges including possession of
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schedule-two cocaine; possession of schedule-six marijuana; possession of a legend
drug; and possession of a hoax device.
Source: http://www.volunteertv.com/home/headlines/43762532.html
25. April 26, Bloomberg – (International) Russia suspends Mexican, some U.S. meat
imports on swine flu. Russia suspended imports of all meat from Mexico and the U.S.
states of Texas, California and Kansas shipped after April 21 on concern about the
spread of swine flu, the country’s veterinary watchdog said. The suspension also affects
pork from Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba,
Nicaragua, Panama, Salvador, and the U.S. states of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas,
Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Florida, the watchdog added
in a statement on its Web site. Swine flu, known as the H1N1 virus, originated in
Mexico where it has been linked to as many as 81 deaths. Travelers arriving in Russia
from the above areas will have meat products confiscated, the watchdog said in the
statement. According to United Press International, U.S. officials said Sunday there is
no evidence the outbreak of swine flu has affected swine and consumers cannot get the
virus from eating pork. “There is no evidence at this time showing that swine have been
infected with this virus,” said the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in a statement.
Source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ag2C9oa6f4Ck&refer=hom
eSee also: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/04/26/USDA-Swine-not-infected-withswine-flu/UPI-49911240800601/
26. April 26, Visalia Times-Delta – (California) Leak at Ruiz Foods in Dinuba prompts
evacuation. An ammonia leak at the Ruiz Foods facility in Dinuba early on April 23
prompted the evacuation of approximately 200 employees from a building. The leak was
reported about 1 a.m. at the facility. It was described as “minimal” and was traced to a
failed check valve on a condensing tower, according to a statement from the Dinubabased food processing company. The malfunction appeared to be on the outside of the
building, but the ventilation system may have sucked ammonia-laced air indoors where
employees were working, said a Dinuba fire engineer. By the time firefighters arrived
about 1:20 a.m., the source of the leak had been identified and the employees had been
evacuated. About 35 people complained of chest pains, shortness of breath or irritation
of the eyes, symptoms consistent with exposure to ammonia fumes, the Dinuba fire
engineer said. All were treated and released Thursday, said a Ruiz Foods spokeswoman.
Eleven others were treated at the scene, according to the company statement. Residents
of the neighborhood adjacent to the plant were told by Dinuba fire personnel to stay
indoors and close their windows as a precaution. Emergency personnel left the scene
about 3:45 a.m., 40 minutes after the check valve had been turned off. The plant was
back in operation by 6 a.m., according to the company statement.
Source: http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/article/20090426/ROI/90426005
27. April 25, Associated Press – (California) No tampering seen in S. Calif. bottled water
scare. A dozen students complained of feeling sick after drinking Aquafina bottled
water from a junior high school vending machine, but the FBI said on April 24 that no
sign of tampering was found and initial tests detected no contamination. Students at La
- 11 -
Mesa Junior High School in Santa Clarita complained of nausea or discomfort on April
23. They were examined at hospitals and released, according to the school principal. No
additional illnesses were reported Friday, he said. “At this time, there’s no evidence that
the product was deliberately tampered with,” an FBI spokeswoman said. A spokesman
for the Pepsi Bottling Group, which manufactures Aquafina, said there is no evidence
any contamination was caused by the company’s manufacturing process.
Source:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hxvyYSNXY7nMDrqFoVBMg
hgJSH8gD97P2B600
28. April 25, Ocala Star-Banner – (Florida) Sources point to selenium in deaths of polo
horses. The Florida Department of Agriculture was mum April 24 about its findings as
to what killed 21 polo horses in South Florida before a championship match. An agency
spokesman said the investigation into the animals’ deaths was continuing and the
department would likely release some of its conclusions early this week. The
investigation has led to the front doors of Franck’s Pharmacy Compounding Lab in
Ocala, Florida. The lab released a prepared statement admitting that “the strength of an
ingredient in medication given the animals was incorrect.” The lab had made the
medication and learned of the mistake after conducting an internal investigation. The
Lechuza polo team said on April 23 in a statement that Franck’s Compounding Lab
produced a substitute for a drug called Biodyl at the direction of a veterinarian. Biodyl is
not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and therefore is illegal in the United
States. The ingredients of Biodyl are selenium (as sodium selenite, a selenium-based
salt), compounds of potassium, magnesium and ATP (adenosine triphosphoric acid).
Five polo horses that were traveling with the poisoned horses but did not get the
medication showed no signs of illness. Citing anonymous sources, La Nacion newspaper
of Argentina reported that the medication given to the horses contained 10 times the
amount of selenium requested. The newspaper reported that 0.5 mg/ml was prescribed
but the mixture contained 5 mg/ml. “(Selenium) would be the suspicious ingredient,” a
local veterinarian said. “This is probably the culprit in the mixture.”
Source:
http://www.ocala.com/article/20090425/ARTICLES/904251016/1402/NEWS?Title=So
urces-point-to-selenium-in-deaths-of-polo-horses
29. April 24, Farm & Ranch Guide – (North Dakota) Emergency feed aid available to
stranded livestock. In response to a severe shortage of feed in some parts of North
Dakota and situations were livestock have been trapped in areas hard to reach due to
flood water, the USDA has allocated $750,000 to the state for emergency feed
assistance, according to the Farm Service Administration state office. The funds will be
administrated through the North Dakota Department of Agriculture, where they will be
used to get feed to stranded livestock. “Producers who have stranded livestock or no
access to feed should report their situation as soon as possible to their local extension
agent,” said North Dakota’s agriculture commissioner. “There was a consensus of all the
concerned parties from the federal government to the agriculture groups that getting feed
to stranded livestock that would otherwise perish is the top priority for spending these
funds.” The latest feed situation in the state as reported by the USDA’s National
- 12 -
Agricultural Statistics Service on April 20 indicated 20 percent of the state was facing
very short feed supplies; 37 percent reported short supplies; 42 percent adequate and 1
percent surplus. This compares to the five-year (2004-2008) average at this time of 4
percent very short; 13 percent short; 77 percent adequate and 6 percent surplus.
Source:
http://www.farmandranchguide.com/articles/2009/04/24/ag_news/livestock_news/live09
.txt
30. April 23, Associated Press – (West Virginia) Grass toxin suspected of killing W.Va.
cattle. State agricultural officials suspect a toxin in a perennial grass brought on by last
summer’s drought may have killed about 20 cattle in southern West Virginia.
Necropsies conducted at Virginia Tech University indicate the animals’ deaths were
consistent with poisoning from reed canary grass, said West Virginia’s agriculture
commissioner. However, other causes have not been ruled out. “It’s hard to draw any
broad conclusions. This is definitely our leading hypothesis,” a state agriculture
spokesman said Thursday. “It’s like a lot of diseases. You never really arrive at (the
cause).” A state veterinarian said, “The drought conditions that would lead to a plant
being toxic, that was definitely evident over the last couple of years…over the next year,
we may not have those conditions repeating themselves.” Since mid-January, agriculture
officials have received reports of excessive cattle losses and many were blamed on poor
nutrition, animal age and the severe winter. The state veterinarian said the suspected
poisoning deaths were associated with partial paralysis of rear limbs. The majority of
those deaths occurred in Monroe, Greenbrier and Nicholas counties with scattered
reports in other counties.
Source: http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-wv-cattledeaths0423apr23,0,5204045.story
[Return to top]
Water Sector
31. April 26, Villages Daily Sun – (Florida) Hydrant failure reveals inspection
shortcomings. Roughly 15 minutes after Sumter County Fire Rescue (SCFR) crews
were dispatched to a house fire at 104 Switcher Street in Wildwood, the first truck was
out of its 1,000-gallon water supply. The customary next step is to tap into a nearby
hydrant. But that is where the trouble for the Engine 31 crew began on the night of
March 9. “The first arriving crew attempted [to open the hydrant]; however, that hydrant
which was located adjacent to the structure on 2nd (Avenue) failed — when the
operating nut cracked off while attempting to open it,” an SCFR incident report states.
According to the report, the hydrant’s failure negated progress firefighters had made
combating the blaze. Eventually, officials needed to shut down U.S. Highway 301 so
they could access a more distant hydrant across the busy highway. “This did take a
while to accomplish, but once in place, the fire was effectively suppressed,” the report
continued. The 1,900 square-foot, three-bedroom home was described by fire officials at
the scene as a “total loss.” Could this scenario have been avoided? According to a
March 13 internal memo obtained in a public records request — yes. “On January 5,
2009…I noticed damage to the hydrant located across the street from this address,”
- 13 -
wrote the SCFR shift commander in the memo. The memo indicates that officials knew
about the damaged hydrant a full two months before the night of its failure. The incident
revealed that poor communication and a loose inspection policy between Wildwood and
Sumter County left the city’s 300-plus hydrants unmonitored.
Source: http://www.thevillagesdailysun.com/articles/2009/04/26/news/news03.txt
32. April 26, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – (Wisconsin) Sewer overflows begin as heavy
rain falls. Combined sanitary and storm sewers in central Milwaukee and eastern
Shorewood began overflowing into urban rivers and Lake Michigan Sunday for the first
time this year as heavy rains sent millions of gallons of storm water down the sewers
and into the deep tunnel, Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District officials said.
Combined sewers continue to deliver most of their diluted sewage to treatment plants
during an overflow. Openings at the top of the sewers allow some of the flow to be
diverted to pipes that carry the wastewater to the streams and lake. Forecasts of more
rain later Sunday, prompted district workers to begin closing gates from combined
sewers to the deep tunnel around 2:45 p.m. Sunday, a district spokesman said.
Overflows started soon after that.
Source: http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/43745447.html
33. April 25, Houston Chronicle – (Texas) Worker killed at Houston manhole. One
worker was killed and two others injured in separate manhole accidents April 24 as they
prepared to test a new 54-inch waterline adjacent to Rankin Road in north Houston. The
accidents occurred just hours and blocks apart. The victims were identified as contract
workers for the North Harris County Regional Water Authority. The District fire chief
said rescue crews were called to a Rankin Road location just east of Northborough Drive
at 1:30 p.m. for a medical emergency involving two men in an “oxygen deficient
atmosphere” at the bottom of a manhole. One man was declared dead at the scene; the
second was transported by helicopter to Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. A
CenterPoint spokeswoman said the company was not involved in the underground work,
but was called to test the site April 24 and found no natural gas leaks. “We were not
involved in the initial project, but we responded to the fire department request to do
some testing,” she said. “We tested Friday and determined there was no natural gas.”
She said the atmosphere in the manhole contained 13 percent oxygen, which is 3
percentage points less than the amount needed to sustain human life. “They were down
there quite a while,” she said. “Maybe 15 minutes. You lose consciousness with your
first breath of that air. After four or five minutes, you run the risk of brain damage.” The
first accident occurred at 9 a.m. when a worker fell into an open manhole at Rankin and
Ella.
Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6390351.html
34. April 24, Benton County Daily Record – (Arkansas) Drive-by drenching: The water
tower in Garfield sprang a leak after bullets struck it. Three bullets struck a water
tower in Garfield on April 21, causing damage that may cost $10,000 to repair. Three
rounds from a high-powered rifle penetrated the tank’s steel skin approximately 100 feet
above the ground, sending a spray of water into the air. Water is escaping the tank at an
estimated rate of 25,000 gallons a day. The tank must remain full to prevent airborne
- 14 -
bacterial contamination until temporary patches — cherry dowels — are pounded into
the holes to stop the flow, according to the Garfield Water and Street superintendent.
The tower, which is owned by the Benton-Washington Regional Public Water
Authority, commonly known as Two-Ton, holds 880,000 gallons of water to serve
Garfield, Gateway and Lost Bridge. When final repairs are made to the tower, probably
at night during low-use hours, each of those towns will have to rely on its own storage to
provide water to customers. An inspection of the tank’s interior may be made by
certified sanitized scuba divers, the superintendent said. The case has been turned over
to the criminal investigation division of the Benton County Sheriff’s Office, according
to the public information deputy for the BCSO. Neighbors reported hearing gunshots the
evening of April 21, he said.
Source: http://nwanews.com/bcdr/News/72803/
35. April 24, Water Technology Online – (Connecticut) Home filter caught water critters
in Hartford. The discovery of hundreds of microorganisms gathering inside a
Bloomfield resident’s newly installed water filter cartridge prompted the resident to alert
water and health officials, resulting in a boil-water advisory for this and nine other
communities, according to an April 24 Hartford Courant article. The Metropolitan
District Commission (MDC) issued the precautionary advisory for 10 communities on
April 22 at the request of the Connecticut Department of Public Health after microscopic
aquatic organisms called “copepods” and “rotifers” were discovered in the drinking
water distribution system, as WaterTech Online reported. A Bloomfield resident told the
Hartford Courant that on April 20 he found what looked like “tiny polliwogs,” each
about half the size of the tip of a pen. The next day, an MDC worker sampled the water
from around the resident’s water filter and found what appeared to be hundreds of
microorganisms swimming in the sample. The discovery prompted a boil-water advisory
in Bloomfield, Glastonbury, Portland, Windsor, Hartford, East Hartford, West Hartford,
South Windsor, and parts of East Granby and Windsor Locks. The advisory was lifted
during the evening of April 23 for East Hartford, Glastonbury, South Windsor and
Portland after testing confirmed the water there was safe, the article said. The advisory
for the six remaining communities is expected to last through at least April 25-26 while
testing continues.
Source: http://watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=71797
36. April 24, Water Technology Online – (National) U.S. House passes water research
bill. The U.S. House of Representatives on April 23 passed H.R. 1145, the National
Water Research and Development Initiative Act of 2009, which coordinates national
research and development efforts regarding national water use, supply and demand. An
amendment to the measure by the U.S. Representative calls for federal research on the
impact of trace amounts of pharmaceuticals and consumer products in treated drinking
water. The final measure passed with bipartisan support, in a 413-10 vote. According to
an April 23 press release, a Senator said, “We know that millions of Americans are
drinking tap water that contains measurable quantities of prescription drugs and other
complex chemical compounds, but we have no long-term plan to address the problem.
Understanding what levels of these drugs pose a threat to human health is the necessary
first step.” The bill on April 23 was received in the Senate and read twice, and then
- 15 -
referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Source: http://watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=71798
[Return to top]
Public Health and Healthcare Sector
37. April 26, Associated Press – (National) U.S. declares public health emergency for
swine flu. The United States declared a public health emergency Sunday to deal with the
emerging new swine flu, much like the government does to prepare for approaching
hurricanes. Officials reported 20 U.S. cases of swine flu in five states so far, with the
latest in Ohio and New York. Unlike in Mexico where the same strain appears to be
killing dozens of people, cases in the United States have been mild — and U.S. health
authorities cannot yet explain why. At a White House news conference, the acting chief
of the Centers for Disease Control and the Secretary of Homeland Security sought to
assure Americans that health officials are taking all appropriate steps to minimize the
impact of the outbreak. Foremost among those is declaring the public health emergency.
As part of that, roughly 12 million doses of the drug Tamiflu will be moved from a
federal stockpile to places where states can quickly get their share if they decide they
need it. Priority will be given to the five states with known cases so far: California,
Texas, New York, Ohio and Kansas.
Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090426/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_swine_flu_emergency;_ylt=
AnIPfsdCPu0uY1TMmyC1qckD5gcF
See also: Developments on swine flu worldwide and How countries are defending
against swine flu
38. April 25, Associated Press – (National) Magnitude of dirty VA hospital equipment
unknown. Two months after the Department of Veterans Affairs issued warnings that
veterans may have been treated with unsterile equipment at VA clinics, veterans are
growing frustrated by the lack of information from the federal agency. Nearly 11,000
former sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines could have been exposed to infectious
diseases because three VA hospitals in the Southeast did not properly clean endoscopic
equipment between patients. On Friday, the VA revealed that another patient had tested
positive for HIV, bringing the total to four such cases among patients who got
endoscope procedures at hospitals in Miami, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Augusta,
Georgia. The agency also said a new hepatitis case had been discovered, increasing the
number of positive tests to 26. More than 4,270 veterans still have yet to get test
results. The VA has not answered questions from the Associated Press about why
problems with cleaning the equipment went on for five years at the Miami and
Murfreesboro hospitals and about a year in Augusta. The VA also refuses to say if it
found similar problems at its other 150 hospitals or if more patients should get blood
tests. The VA has stressed that the positive tests are “not necessarily linked” to medical
treatment at its hospitals, and infections do not always cause symptoms and can go
undetected for years. Still, veterans are calling on the agency to release more
information.
Source:
- 16 -
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h7Q_BB0OpsIswSFhXtUtnrBRl
5UgD97P51CO0
39. April 24, Associated Press – (New Jersey) NJ authorities looking for source of
hepatitis C. New Jersey health officials are trying to determine the source of 15 cases of
hepatitis C reported by an Atlantic City hospital. The cases at AtlantiCare Regional
Medical Center date back as far as 2005. Those stricken are patients at the hospital’s
dialysis unit. But health officials say they do not know whether the cases are linked to
the hospital. The state says that in 2007, there were more than 100 acute cases and more
than 7,000 chronic cases statewide.
Source:
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/new_jersey/20090424_ap_njauthoritie
slookingforsourceofhepatitisc.html
[Return to top]
Government Facilities Sector
40. April 27, WIRED – (National) Military bases block official Army tweets. The Army
announced recently that it would get a million or more followers on micro-messaging
site Twitter. But doing this will be difficult, due to the fact that many Army bases block
Twitter on its networks. Army secrecy regulations, read literally, make it next-toimpossible for average soldiers to blog. Yet leading generals, deployed to war zones, are
keeping online journals. And the Army’s press office is making a concerted push to
reach out to bloggers and non-traditional media. The Defense Department bans
YouTube on its networks, for instance, while the many military bases also keep out the
Pentagon’s own video-sharing site. A public affairs specialist in the Army’s Online and
Social Media Division blamed these sorts of network blocks on “directives coming from
the Department of Defense, which has deemed certain social networking sites to be an
increased threat for viruses and intrusions.”
Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/04/military-bases-block-official-armytweets/
41. April 27, Associated Press – (Virginia) Hampton University dropout wounds two,
himself in college shootings. Armed with three guns, an 18-year-old college dropout
from New York City shot a pizza deliveryman and a dorm monitor on April 26 before
turning a gun on himself. Miraculously, all three survived. The former Hampton
University student parked his car off campus to avoid a vehicle checkpoint at the
university’s main gate, officials said. He followed the pizza deliveryman on foot and
into his former dorm, all-male freshman housing, according to the Hampton University
Police chief. Once inside, he shot the pizza man, entered the monitor’s office and fired
three more shots — then shot himself, the police chief said. The dorm monitor, who
suffered two gunshot wounds in his arms and a third in the leg, has already been
released from the hospital, the university president said. The suspect had not been
charged as of Sunday night and the motive was unclear, a Hampton Police spokesman
said.
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/04/27/2009-04- 17 -
27_dropout_wounds_2_self_in_college_shootings.html
42. April 26, WJW 8 Cleveland – (Ohio) 53 people arrested after off-campus party turns
into riot in Kent. Police say 53 people were arrested when an end of the year party in
Kent, Ohio, known as College Fest on East College Street, turned into a riot on April 25.
The event attracted thousands of students and heavy alcohol consumption. Tensions
began escalating after police arrested an underage girl for drinking alcohol in the middle
of the street and then arrested one of the girl’s acquaintances. A local resident said
people started throwing bottles at officers because he forcefully pushed the girl. Kent
Police responded by bringing in reinforcements from multiple agencies in full riot gear.
Police officials declined requests for interviews on April 26 but said in a written
statement that officers announced a dispersal order and arrested a number of people who
failed to leave with multiple warnings. The crowd continued to throw objects such as
bottles at officers and even firefighters who arrived to put out bonfires in the middle of
the street. Paint balls filled with pepper spray were fired at some of the students. Most of
the people arrested were charged with failure to disperse. They have been ordered to
appear in Kent Municipal Court on either April 29 or April 30. A Kent University press
statement released on the night of April 25 read in part that: The university secured
campus buildings in the area as a preventive measure. There have reportedly been
approximately 125 arrests. It is unknown at this time how many of the arrest are
students. No injuries have been reported.
Source: http://www.fox8.com/news/wjw-party-riot-ksu-0422,0,3290409.story
43. April 25, WTOP 103.5 Washington, D.C. – (Maryland) Suspicious package found at
Walt Whitman high school. A suspicious package at Walt Whitman High School
caused the SAT’s to be cancelled on April 25. A county fire and EMS spokesman said
hazmat crews were called to the school in Bethesda, Maryland just before 12 p.m. He
said a backpack was found in the school’s parking lot and officials found what looked
like several pipes inside the bag. However, after further examination hazmat crews
determined that materials were not explosive. Two homes on Whittier Boulevard were
also evacuated.
Source: http://www.wtop.com/?nid=598&sid=1660544
44. April 25, Associated Press – (District of Columbia) Errant plane causes brief White
House lock down. A small, single-engine plane strayed into restricted air space near the
U.S. Capitol on April 24, forcing anxious officials to place the White House in
temporary lock down and take steps to evacuate the U.S. Capitol. The episode was over
within minutes as two F-16 fighter jets and two Coast Guard helicopters were
dispatched to intercept the plane and escort it to an airport in Maryland, according to the
Federal Aviation Administration. A North American Aerospace Defense Command
spokesman said the two helicopters established communications with the pilot. The
owner of the Indian Head Airport in Charles County, Maryland said the pilot and his
wife were en route from Maine to North Carolina to visit the couple’s daughter. The
owner said a technology problem on the Cessna 180, rather than anything nefarious,
forced the plane to enter restricted air space, prompting the swift military response. “It
was just a navigation mistake, the GPS went and the pilot got confused. The White
- 18 -
House said the President “briefly relocated” during the incident, but declined to say
where he was taken. The Senate was in session, and briefly recessed. The House was not
meeting.
Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jyP8CNNy1Lp8SNw_IL5MnC2553gD97P1EBG0
45. April 24, Navy News – (International) USS Stennis sailor dies in accident. A sailor
assigned to USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) died April 24 after sustaining injuries while
performing maintenance on the exterior of the ship moored at Changi Pier, Singapore.
The sailor was aboard a small boat conducting a routine procedure to secure drains from
the ship’s catapult system when he was crushed between the small boat and the ship’s
hull. He was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. The sailor’s name
is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. USS John C. Stennis arrived in
Singapore April 24 for a scheduled port visit during a six-month deployment to the
western Pacific Ocean. An investigation into the cause of the accident has been initiated.
Source: http://www.military.com/news/article/April-2009/uss-stennis-sailor-dies-inaccident.html?ESRC=topstories.RSS
46. April 24, Commercial Dispatch – (Mississippi) Suspected prank forces closure of
MSU auditorium. Mississippi State University police evacuated a campus auditorium
in the basement of Mitchell Memorial Auditorium after a professor discovered white
powder in one of two envelopes left on a table there. The professor then called MSU
police, who subsequently called in an official from the university’s radiation safety and
chemical hygiene office, and the room was quarantined. Authorities briefly quarantined
the professor and two students who were in the room when he opened the envelopes.
The professor and the students eventually were released and police took the powder
from the library for further testing. It is unknown when authorities will know the
contents of the envelopes, but police and school officials took contact information from
everyone involved in case the substance was dangerous.
Source: http://www.cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=1155
47. April 24, Associated Press – (National) Collision fears slows drone use expansion.
Leaps in unmanned aircraft technology have military authorities clamoring to use more
drones for jobs from coastal patrols and border surveillance to tracking natural disasters.
Fears of in-flight collisions, however, are slowing any broad expansion of their use in
U.S. airspace. Federal Aviation Administration officials made it clear in a recent closed
government conference that until the pilotless aircraft gain the high-tech ability to sense
and avoid commercial aircraft and other airborne objects, the government is unlikely to
allow them to operate much more freely in congested airspace. During the 2008 northern
California wildfires, the Air Force, Navy and NASA each offered to launch unmanned
systems to track the flames, identify hot spots and determine where the fires were likely
to move. But due to FAA guidelines, only a single drone could fly in the region at one
time. Military officials raised the firefighting incident as an example of expanded drone
uses during a two-day summit at U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs,
Colorado, late last month. At the meeting, up to 100 senior leaders from at least 10
government agencies tried to resolve some of the problems that restrict the use of
- 19 -
unmanned aerial vehicles in American airspace. Officials are hoping the FAA will
streamline its approval process for the use of drones. Last year, the FAA granted 165
certificates of approval for drones, mostly for the Pentagon and Customs and Border
Protection during national emergencies or disasters and for surveillance along U.S.
borders. The certificates shut down swaths of airspace so the drones can fly unimpeded,
and approvals can be for a single launch or for multiple flights over several days.
Source: http://www.military.com/news/article/April-2009/collision-fears-slow-droneuse-expansion.html?ESRC=topstories.RSS
[Return to top]
Emergency Services Sector
48. April 26, Beaumont Enterprise – (Texas) SWAT gear, weapons still missing from
stolen police SUV. Some of a sheriff deputy’s SWAT gear remained missing Sunday
evening after his vehicle was stolen from Lamar University, traded for crack cocaine in
Port Arthur and then set on fire. Two men remained booked in the Jefferson County Jail
awaiting arraignment in connection with the incident. One is charged with auto theft.
The other is charged with auto theft and arson, the deputy chief said Sunday. It all began
about 7 a.m. Saturday, when an unnamed deputy left his 2008 Chevrolet Trailblazer
running as he went to return a radio at the Lamar University Police Department. The
suspect made off with not only the vehicle, but the deputy’s personal items and SWAT
gear — body armor, handgun and rifle. The vehicle was equipped with the Lo-Jack auto
theft recovery system, and an hour later the blazing vehicle was found by Port Arthur
police in the 1500 block of 11th Street on the west side.
Source:
http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/local/swat_gear__weapons_still_missing_fro
m_stolen_police_suv_04-26-2009.html
49. April 26, Los Angeles Times – (California) LAPD opens new Harbor Division police
station. The Los Angeles Police Department unveiled its new $40-million police station
during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Saturday for the Harbor Station, which serves parts of
San Pedro, Harbor Gateway and Wilmington. The 50,000-square-foot facility will be the
new home to the Harbor Division’s 260 patrol officers, detectives and support staff, who
have been working out of temporary trailers since 2005, when the nearly century-old
Harbor Station was closed for demolition. There will be no increase in staffing, but the
new facilities, which include a 300-inmate jail, are expected to make operations more
efficient. With no jail at the temporary site, officers have had to drive prisoners 20
minutes to the 77th Division jail, taking them off the beat for extended periods.
Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/04/the-los-angeles-policedepartment-will-unveil-its-new-40-million-police-station-in-a-ribbon-cutting-ceremonytoday-for-the-h.html
[Return to top]
Information Technology
- 20 -
50. April 27, CNET News – (International) Google plugs PC power into cloud computing.
Google has released experimental but still very much real software that brings in some
of the power of the PC, where people often use Web applications. Google Native Client,
first released in 2008 but updated with a new version on April 23, is a browser plug-in
for securely running computationally intense software downloaded from a Web site.
And on April 21, Google released O3D, a plug-in that lets Web-based applications tap
into a computer’s graphics chip, too. The projects are rough around the edges, to say the
least. Native Client (NaCl) is more security research project than usable programming
foundation right now, and O3D exists in part to try to accelerate the arrival of some
future, not necessarily compatible, standard for building 3D abilities into Web
applications. But both fundamentally challenge the idea that Web apps necessarily are
stripped-down, feeble counterparts to the software that runs natively on a personal
computer, and they come from a company that has engineering skill, a yen for moving
activity to the Internet, and search-ad profits that can fund projects that do not
immediately or directly make money.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10227150-2.html
51. April 27, The H – (International) Vulnerability patched in Symantec Brightmail
Gateway. Symantec has released an update for its Brightmail Gateway email security
appliance to fix a cross-site scripting and privilege escalation vulnerability in the
appliance’s Web based Control Center. Attackers could exploit the vulnerabilities from
the internal network as the Control Center failed to properly filter client input from
authorized users of the Control Center console. The update is available via the Software
Update feature of Brightmail and is also available to registered users to download.
Source: http://www.h-online.com/security/Vulnerability-patched-in-SymantecBrightmail-Gateway--/news/113155
52. April 26, Detroit Observer & Eccentric News – (Michigan) Patterson’s phishing bill
breezes through senate. A bill sponsored by a Michigan state senator that is pushing
tougher punishments for Internet crimes sailed through the senate on April 23. In
particular the legislation targets phishing, or fraudulently acquiring personal information
over the Internet. Phishing is a unique form of identity theft where criminals use e-mails
or pop-up ads to lead consumers to counterfeit Web sites designed to trick recipients
into divulging financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords
and social security numbers. Because the criminals highjack the names and logos of
reputable banks, e-retailers and credit card companies, they convince consumers to
respond. If the bill becomes law it would increase to a maximum of 10 years in prison
and $500,000 in fines from the current five years and $25,000. The bill also would allow
the attorney general or the Internet provider to file civil actions against the phishing site
operators.
Source: http://www.hometownlife.com/article/20090426/NEWS15/904260584
53. April 24, IDG News Service – (International) Worm solves Gmail’s CAPTCHA,
creates fake accounts. A Vietnamese security company has detected what it believes is
a new worm that thwarts Google’s security protections in order to register new dummy
Gmail accounts from which to send spam. Bach Koa Internetwork Security (BKIS) said
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the worm was discovered earlier the week of April 20 in one of its honeypots, the term
for a computer set up to catch samples of malicious software. BKIS has named the
malware “W32.Gaptcha.Worm.” Once a computer is infected with Gaptcha, the worm
launches the Internet Explorer browser and goes to Gmail’s new account registration
page. It begins to fill in random names of fictitious users. When confronted with a
CAPTCHA, the worm sends the image to a remote server for processing, wrote a senior
malware researcher, on the BKIS blog. A CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public
Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is the distorted text that a person must
solve before a new account can be created. It used to be hard for computers to translate
the text, but improvements in OCR (optical character recognition) technology have
overcome that barrier. In some cases, spammers are believed to employ people in lowincome countries to figure out the CAPTCHA in order to gain new e-mail accounts.
Once a new registration is complete, the account details are then e-mailed to a spammer.
After too many account registrations, Google will eventually block the particular
computer creating the accounts. The worm then removes itself, the researcher wrote.
Source:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/163788/worm_solves_gmails_captcha_c
reates_fake_accounts.html
Internet Alert Dashboard
To report cyber infrastructure incidents or to request information, please contact US−CERT at soc@us−cert.gov or visit their
Website: http://www.us-cert.gov.
Information on IT information sharing and analysis can be found at the IT ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Center)
Website: https://www.it-isac.org/.
[Return to top]
Communications Sector
54. April 27, WGRZ 2 Buffalo – (New York) Regional outage affected Time Warner
phone, Internet customers. A spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable says an outage at
the company’s regional headquarters caused customers across the Northeast to lose
telephone and Internet services early April 26. Crews worked to bring the Northeast
Regional Office in Syracuse back online, thousands of customers from Buffalo to
Portland, Maine were without phone and Internet access. However, the outage did not
affect cable TV services. It took several hours to get the regional high-speed data
network back up and running.
Source: http://www.wgrz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=66211&provider=gnews
[Return to top]
Commercial Facilities Sector
55. April 27, Dallas Morning News – (Texas) Crews go through drills for potential
emergencies at new Cowboys stadium. Ambulances, fire trucks and two rescue
helicopters stood by as the Arlington Police and Fire departments and other agencies
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responded to a training exercise Sunday morning at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium.
The exercise simulated a mass casualty in which a truck drove through the barricades
and struck about 50 people standing in line outside the stadium. Inside the stadium,
public safety personnel were working on other top-secret simulations. “We think we
have quality plans in place, but sometimes you don’t get a chance to look at it and tweak
it,” an Arlington police lieutenant said. He said it will take time to review Sunday’s
activities and assess how well everything went.
Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DNresponders_27met.ART.State.Edition1.4a841b3.html
56. April 25, Foster’s Daily Democrat – (New Hampshire) Fire near food court closes
several nearby Fox Run Mall stores. A fire in an electrical unit outside the Fox Run
Mall in Newington resulted in a series of small explosions on Friday that forced the
temporary closure of several businesses in the busy retail center. Nobody was injured in
the incident, which summoned fire crews from Newington, Portsmouth, Pease Air
Guard Base and Dover to the mall shortly after 4:10 p.m. The Newington fire chief said
a problem with the wiring carrying power to a portion of the mall resulted in a fire in a
metal box containing a transformer switch. He also stated that at least 24 businesses on
the food court side of the mall were evacuated for precautionary reasons even though no
fire or smoke got into the interior of the mall. The box is located outside the mall in a
“service court” that provides delivery access to a cluster of businesses near the food
court. A Newington fire lieutenant said an electrical problem resulted in a number of
small explosions inside the metal box and some resulting smoke. Emergency responders
said the explosions triggered the call for a first alarm, which called in Portsmouth, Pease
and Dover. Durham, Rye, North Hampton fire crews provided station coverage during
the incident. A portion of the mall that still had power was slated to remain open for
business throughout the evening.
Source:
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090425/GJNEWS_01/704259966
/-1/FOSNEWS
57. April 24, WTVY 4 Dothan – (Alabama) Dothan Civic Center evacuated after
suspicious package found. Civilians and employees were evacuated from the Dothan
Civic Center the afternoon of April 24 after law enforcement received a phone call about
a suspicious package. Hazmat teams and the Dothan bomb squad responded around
12:30. They quickly evacuated and secured the building. Bomb squad members suited
up and made their way in to investigate. The package was located on the second floor of
the building. After roughly 30 minutes, authorities determined it was just an empty box.
Employees at the civic center were let back into the building and business carried on
usual for the remainder of the day.
Source: http://www.wtvynews4.com/home/headlines/43648082.html
58. April 24, Daily News Wire Services – (California) Bomb threat prompts evacuation of
Century City office. Someone planted a facsimile of a bomb in a Century City office
tower and called in a threat, causing police to evacuate at least part of the building,
authorities said. The threat to 1901 Avenue of the Stars was called in just before 4 p.m.
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on April 23, according to police spokesmen. As police searched the 20-story building,
they found a “suspicious item” in a restroom on the 15th floor, a Los Angeles police
(LAPD) spokesman said. A lieutenant of the LAPD’s West Los Angeles Station said the
item was made to look like a bomb but posed no threat. Bomb squad officers spent
several hours at the building, and the lieutenant said the LAPD’s criminal conspiracy
unit would pursue suspects in the case. The building’s tenants include Sheppard, Mullin,
Richter & Hampton, a major law firm occupying Suite 1600.
Source: http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_12217683
[Return to top]
National Monuments & Icons Sector
Nothing to report
[Return to top]
Dams Sector
59. April 26, Jamestown Sun – (North Dakota) Reclamation confirms first official spill
through Jamestown Reservoir spillway. Bureau of Reclamation officials have
confirmed the first official spill through the Jamestown Reservoir spillway. This is the
first time the spillway has been used since the completion of the dam in February 1954.
According to instrumentation used by Reclamation, the reservoir level reached 1,454.04
at 1 p.m. According to Reclamation, water spills when Jamestown Reservoir reaches
elevation of 1,454 feet or about 221,000 acre-feet of water. “An acre foot of water is
about the size of a football field covered with one foot of water,” said a Reclamation
spokesman. The spillway is basically a giant 18 inch cement funnel. Rather than spilling
over the dam, high waters spill into the funnel and are released through a system called
outlet works and then into the James River. The funnel’s largest diameter is 13.4 feet
and narrows to about 9.6 feet. It is designed to handle a maximum of about 1.3 million
gallons per minute, which occurs when the lake level rises to 10.4 feet above the level of
the spillway. In 1997, the water level at the reservoir was 9 feet below the spillway
approximately 1,445 feet. Reclamation in cooperation with the Army Corps of
Engineers has reduced flows from the reservoir’s controlled spillway to 1,500 cfs.
Source: http://www.jamestownsun.com/articles/index.cfm?id=84712&section=News
60. April 24, Daily Comet – (Louisiana) Levees low spots to be raised. Repeated sinking of
the lower Ward 7 levee in Chauvin led parish officials the week of April 20 to consider
setting aside another $2 million to elevate the barrier. The stretch of levee, between
Boudreaux Canal north to Lashbrook pump station, was built to an 8-foot elevation. But
continued settling and poor soil conditions have resulted in many portions measured at
below 7 feet and some spots below 6 feet, according to a letter from the parish president
to Terrebonne council members. Before the September storms, there were three sunken
portions along the flood-protection levee. To set aside money for the elevation work, the
council has to approve a budget amendment. The council unanimously agreed April 22,
in an 8-0 vote, to call a public hearing on the $1.99 million amendment at 6:30 p.m.
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May 13 at the Government Tower, 8026 Main St.
Source:
http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20090424/ARTICLES/904249901/1026?Title=Areanews-in-brief
[Return to top]
DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report Contact Information
About the reports − The DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report is a daily [Monday through
Friday] summary of open−source published information concerning significant critical infrastructure
issues. The DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report is archived for ten days on the Department of
Homeland Security Website: http://www.dhs.gov/iaipdailyreport
Contact Information
Content and Suggestions:
Send mail to NICCReports@dhs.gov or contact the DHS Daily
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Contact DHS
To report physical infrastructure incidents or to request information, please contact the National Infrastructure
Coordinating Center at nicc@dhs.gov or (202) 282−9201.
To report cyber infrastructure incidents or to request information, please contact US−CERT at soc@us−cert.gov
or visit their Web page at www.us-cert.gov.
Department of Homeland Security Disclaimer
The DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report is a non−commercial publication intended to educate and
inform personnel engaged in infrastructure protection. Further reproduction or redistribution is subject to original
copyright restrictions. DHS provides no warranty of ownership of the copyright, or accuracy with respect to the
original source material.
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